


With Each Sunrise

by mageswagger



Series: Bedroom Hymns [4]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Blow Jobs, F/M, Friendship, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Tender Sex, They fucking love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 16:56:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16896435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mageswagger/pseuds/mageswagger
Summary: Sequel to “An Old Solution.” Gage promised her that he’d figure something out for them, and he’s a man who doesn’t take his word lightly. It took time, and cleverness, but here they are. It’s no white picket fence, and it’s hard work - but it’s the one thing that the Commonwealth hadn’t managed to take from her.





	With Each Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> I just…wanted Gage to be a daddy so fucking bad so here is a happy little post-heat story where Gage and Nora can just be happy and fucking LOVE EACH OTHER SO GOD DAMN MUCH
> 
> but also there’s fucking. because like….duh.
> 
> and i feel like this is where I should mention that when I first got into writing for Fallout 4 I really never thought that fuckin’ GAGE would be the one I’m fixated on but, you know. Here we are.
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed this to let me know! I love hearing from everyone :)

Sometimes Nora wondered if she should have taken the synth child with her.

The thoughts didn’t come often, but when they did, it was usually late at night when she would wake and be struck with a sudden and intense flash of fear. She would gasp awake, eyes flinging open and ready to surge out of bed when Gage’s arm would tighten around her middle as he would grumble and pull her back. The first time it’d happened he’d been scared something had happened, that something was wrong, but after a few months he just went right past the questions and into grounding her. It kept them both from losing any more sleep than they had too.

Of course, now a days, she was too round to properly bolt up - the most she could get was an awkward sort of wobble before Gage’s hand would spread across her rounded belly and she would fall back into bed, breathless but back in the moment, steadied further with each gentle pass of his palm over her stomach.

But that night she didn’t bolt up in sleep. She struggled getting to sleep at all. Gage was there beside her, his hand on her stomach and his nose buried against the back of her head, each breath tickling the small hairs on the nape of her neck. She felt warm and safe, but her thoughts were relentless and her regrets painful reminders of where she had failed before. Where she might fail again.

But Gage was there, steadfast, and while he wasn’t particularly soft or doting or loving or any other word she might have used to describe her ideal man when she was a wide-eyed teenager watching men in fatigues pass through campus, she found the older she got the less she wanted that. What she craved was stability, was accountability, dependability, and Gage made up for his questionable grasp on affection by checking off all of those boxes ten times over.

Logically speaking she knew what happened to Shaun, the real Shaun, was not her fault. She could divorce herself from that pain because she knew that nurture often trumped nature, and that no matter what traits they may have shared, without someone there to guide him down the proper paths they would wither away and warp into something different and awful. Nora had given birth to Shaun, but she had not raised him - the Institute had.

But the synth child…where ever he was, whatever had happened to him, was uniquely her fault. She had abandoned that Shaun in a moment of panic and fear and…

What if she did that to her next child?

Slowly Nora pushed herself up from bed, gently removing Gage’s hand from her belly and running a comforting hand over his shoulder when he stirred and mumbled a half-question, likely where she was going or if everything was alright. He let her go after hazily watching her walk towards the hall, and then let his head fall back onto the pillow and straight into sleep.

After a brief stop in the bathroom (because god but this child was determined to curl up on her bladder at every available opportunity) she tugged on a heavy winter jacket and stepped out onto the stoop, taking a seat with a low grunt as her back protested, and just watched as the nightly guards moved from post to post, pistols in hand as they surveyed the waste around them, the lights of Sanctuary flickering just beyond the hill.

Footsteps came from her left and she lifted her gaze to see a familiar lithe figure ambling her way. She smiled in the dark, saw the responding glow of the end of a cigarette that was quickly tossed to the side before MacCready sidled up beside her and sat with way more ease than she had.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, looking out to the lights in the distance, posture slouched and tired but eyes as attentive as they ever were.

“Having some trouble keeping the anxiety at bay,” she said, bracing her hands behind her and leaning back to try and relieve some of the pressure on her stomach. She sighed heavily, head falling back, and she could feel Mac’s eyes on her without having to look at him. “I wasn’t this nervous the first time I was pregnant. Course, that was a different time. So I don't think I had as much to worry about. But my good friend here seems completely unwilling to let me sleep tonight.” She gave her belly a small, affectionate pat, and felt her child shift inside of her as it’s foot jabbed up against the offending palm. “They’re angry I guess.”

“No use in worrying about something that hasn’t happened,” MacCready said with a dismissive shrug. “You do that a lot. Worry when you don’t need to. I’m surprised your hair hasn’t started going grey.”

“I like to imagine I’ve got a few years before that happens,” Nora said wryly. “Or at least a few months. I feel like this one is going to be a handful. Not that I can even be mad about it. They’re coming by it honestly.”

MacCready gave a short little laugh under his breath. “Yeah. That’s putting it lightly. You’re a fu - freakin’ menace, boss.”

“Only way to get things done around here,” she quipped. She looked to him, casually observed the tired slouch of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. “How’s Duncan?”

“Getting a bit better every day,” MacCready said. “He’s able to go longer before getting tired. Curie says that he’ll be back to himself in no time, but - well. Chances are he’s never gonna be able to do too much. Prone to exhaustion, I think was how she said it.” He sighed and shook his head. “Honestly, a lot of it went over my head. Lucy was the one with all the medical know-how - I just know how to keep someone from dying and how to help. All the medical shi - stuff goes right over my head.”

“But he’s healthy, right? No drastic after effects?”

“Healthy as a horse,” he agreed, chest puffing out a bit in pride. “So he may not be able to run a marathon. But he’s tough in his own way.”

“You did good with him,” Nora praised, smiling softly as his cheeks darkened and his gaze fell to the dirt. “He’s a good kid.”

“He thinks you’re the coolest person in the world, in case you didn’t realize,” he said. “Well, either you or Gage. Seems to change every other day.”

“Well, I think that Gage is the coolest person in the world, but I might be a bit biased.”

MacCready laughed again, a little snort that made her grin widen. “No offense, boss, but I don’t think cool is the word I would use.”

“Don’t let Duncan hear you,” she cautioned teasingly. “You’ll break his little heart, and I don’t know about you, but his puppy dog eyes are worse than a bullet to the gut.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it? Barely even five and already he’s got emotional manipulation down pat.” His voice dropped as he murmured, like a secret, “Little shit.”

Silence ruled for a moment as they sat together, watching purple clouds roll across the night sky, and finally she broke the silence to say: “You could stay in Sanctuary, you know. If you wanted to. You know Preston would love to have you there, with your eye.”

MacCready shook his head. “Nah. Settlement’s a little to big for my tastes. No, I’m happy right here - small settlement, handful of people, easy to patrol and easy to guard. Feels safer that way. Here, you’re the only one I gotta bother answerin’ to. And you don’t send me on stupid fuckin’ missions with no pay. Sides. I kinda got used to watching your back.”

What he didn’t say, he didn’t need to. It wasn’t a new conversation, but they both knew that he wasn’t exactly happy with the welcome home Preston had offered her. Not that Nora could blame him. As far as he knew she’d just disappeared into the wealth and came back months later, pregnant with a raider mate on her heels. He didn’t hate her, at least she didn’t think he did, but he was all kinds of disappointed in her and that just made her feel worse. For all that she and MacCready had their differences and strains between them, they were friends. Best friends, really. And MacCready, despite how he liked to play it, was loyal.

Nora didn’t think she deserved his loyalty, but he had given it to her, and so here he was - living in an old gas station that only recently could really be considered a settlement, thanks in no small part to a lot of elbow grease from her and Gage, though to be certain he had grumbled the whole time.

After months of work - some of which she’d been forced to stop working when Curie determined that her body just couldn’t handle the constant lifting and building - they’d managed to turn a struggling settlement with mattresses tucked away into the garage into something that could finally sustain itself. Wooden walls lined the perimeter of the stop, elevated wooden walkways encircling the walls and interspersed with guard posts and turrets that kept wild beasts at bay and deterred most raiders from wandering too close. The covered pump area had been converted into a small marketplace with some elbow grease and sweet talking from Nora, and the land just behind it converted into a large farm. The station itself was no longer just a covering for mattresses and was now a sort of town hall (not that those really existed anymore, unless you counted the Old State House in Goodneighbor). When Nora and Gage had settled in, they had gotten to work building a home - and then one home turned to two, and then three, and soon enough the roof of the Red Rocket was converted into what were essentially apartments for small families.

Nora, personally, had refused to live somewhere that required climbing several flights of stairs while pregnant. So she and Gage had set up on the edges, the only house near the farmland, and eventually as the farm grew so did their privacy. The only other home that didn’t extend stories up above the fence line was MacCready’s, and that was all for Duncan.

But in the end, once they had shown that the land could be used better than the settlers who came knew how to, the rest had been left up to them. Really, Nora could only take credit for the farm, the water purifiers, the market, and about 50% of her own home. The rest was Gage, MacCready, and the settlers themselves. But that didn’t stop the settlers from acting like Nora was a gift from God, there to make their lives better through her presence alone.

It was intimidating as all hell. But the settlers were kind, forgiving, and though Gage wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine they still smiled at him and offered to lend him a hand whenever it looked like he may need it. That was more than she could say of the people who lived just beyond their borders.

“Sometimes I wonder if he’s happy here,” Nora admitted into the silence, voice soft and hesitant. MacCready didn’t need to ask to know what she was talking about. “He gave up everything for me. And sometimes, I feel like I shouldn’t have asked him to.”

“That’s what love’ll do to you,” he said, and for a surreal moment it was as if he were the elder here. But he was a good six years younger than her, and she knew it showed at times. “Makes you wanna do whatever you gotta to keep ‘em safe. Sh - shoot. I would’ve done this and a lot more for Lucy. Sides, it isn’t like he can’t go out and find work or something to do. The way I see it, he chose to come here, chose to stay and play settler, and if he really wanted more to do then he would go find it.”

His words comforted her a little, but not enough to completely erase her worries. She knew they would come back - they always did - but for now they quieted and she was allowed to relax her shoulders and just exhale all her worries away to be carried off by the wind. “Thanks, Mac.”

“Yeah, don’t go tellin’ people I was nice to you,” he said dismissively. “They might start trying to talk to me.”

Nora laughed, and as she laughed she heard the door crack open behind her. She tipped her head backwards and watched as Gage stepped out onto the porch, looking unhappy to be awake, and shuffled to the stoop to join the other two. Nora scooted over to make room for him as he sat with a grunt. “Didn’t realize there was a party goin’ on out here,” he said, drawl exacerbated by sleep.

“Sorry, we woulda invited you, but it was for cool kids only. You’re a bit too old to qualify,” MacCready said.

“I think I’ll manage to get over that,” Gage drawled. He nudged Nora’s shoulder with his own, and she leaned into him with a small grunt as the baby kicked against her. “Not tired?”

“Nah, couldn’t sleep,” she said. “This fucker keeps trying to play soccer with my bladder, and I don’t know what’s more annoying, waking up every ten minutes or just staying up.”

MacCready snorted at her choice description. “You know, I feel like Duncan needs to set up a swear jar for you two. Else your kid's gonna come out thinking his name is ‘this fucker.’”

“Ah, yes. We wouldn’t want to scandalize the neighbors,” Nora retorted, idly running a hand along her stomach. “Their poor delicate ears. Whoever thought that a child might curse?”

“Careful there. Use much more sarcasm and you might forget how to be sincere,” Gage said. Slowly Nora slid sideways until she was using his lap as a pillow, and after a minute she made the executive decision to kick her legs up into MacCready’s lap.

“I don’t remember signing up for this,” MacCready said, but he made no move to dislodge her.

“I elected you,” Nora said with a sigh as Gage began to slowly comb his fingers through her hair, taking care to gently work out any knots when they caught on his fingers. “You can’t refuse. It’s already been decided.”

“You know, I’m startin’ to think you have trouble not bein’ in charge,” Gage teased her. “What the hell are you gonna do when someone doesn’t just do what you say?”

“Well, historically speaking, I usually wound up shooting them,” Nora mused. “But I think that might not work to well here.”

“Please don’t kill all the settlers,” MacCready said. “Otherwise I’ll have to start farming, and I think I’d rather cut off my own hands.”

“Gotta agree with the kid on this one,” Gage echoed.

Nora gave a dramatic sigh, but she was smiling, and soon enough Gage’s hand had joined hers on her stomach, gently tracing her belly until familiar little feet started to press up against the touch as if to try and kick him away. His hand paused, lingered to feel the little kicks, and Nora’s heart swelled in her chest to the point of bursting. Her own hand lifted to gently catch his face, thumb idly tracing along his jaw as she looked at him with open adoration that she couldn’t hide even if she’d wanted to.

MacCready groaned, pushed her legs from him, and stood. “Alright you two - this is where I tap out. Go make goo-goo eyes somewhere else, I’m gonna do a quick patrol before bed.”

“But I was comfortable,” Nora protested.

“Being your footrest isn’t in my contract,” MacCready said, pulling out his cigarettes but not lighting one up just yet. “I’ll see you two in the morning. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That doesn’t leave out much,” Nora said, and MacCready retaliated by throwing his unlit cigarette at her. She laughed as it bounced across her stomach and rolled off the porch, and MacCready just pulled another cigarette out in its place, gave a brief wave, and lit it as he walked away from them.

“He’s an annoying little shit,” Gage said. “Don’t know why you like him.”

“Shut up, you like him too,” Nora said.

“Well, yeah. But you usually have better taste.”

She peered up at him with a mischievous smile. “I chose you, didn’t I? What does that tell you?”

“That you’re havin’ a few too many lapses in judgement lately,” he retorted. “C’mon, darlin’, lets get you inside. Gonna have to try and get to sleep eventually.”

“You might have to help me up,” she warned as she sat up with no small amount of effort, using his shoulder to get her upper body vertical. Gage stood once his lap was clear and offered her a hand to help pull her to her feet, and though she wobbled precariously she found steady ground and managed to keep her balance. Once standing she stepped into his space and curled her arms around him, getting up on her tippy toes to press soft kisses along his neck. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured, and she knew his voice well enough to hear the undercurrent of bashfulness he tried to cover with his gruffness. “C’mon, ain’t gonna get any rest if you keep that up.”

“Maybe I don’t want to rest,” she said coyly, waggling her brows as she settled back onto flat feet. “Maybe I’m trying to seduce you, sir.”

“Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you already managed to do that,” he reminded her as he took the initiative and began guiding her back into their modest home. “Or did you forget how this happened?”

“Well, I don’t know if that exactly counts as seduction,” she argued, knowing full well she was just being a menace at that point. “I remember feeling very seduced by you.”

“Now that is about the worst argument I’ve ever heard. Do you even remember how that happened, or did it get all muddled up in that head of yours? If I remember anything - and I do - you’re the one who seduced me.”

“Hmmm. No. I don’t remember that,” Nora said, shaking her head as the stepped into their home and shut the door behind them. “Maybe you should remind me sometimes.”

“Imma do more than remind you in a minute,” Gage threatened - but if the intent was to deter her, it failed miserably. She just smiled coyly, tried to press herself up against him, and found her belly stopping her before she could get as close as she wanted. She sighed, let her head fall back in a brief burst of exasperation.

“I don’t think this is doing my seduction techniques any favors,” she groused, glaring down at her belly as Gage chuckled and pulled her back towards their room and their bed.

“Sweetheart, ain’t much you could do that would keep me from feelin’ seduced,” he assured her, and though it didn’t feel true, the fact that he said it made her heart flutter and helped her forget about the literal bump between them. “Now go to bed, or I’m liable to lose my mind. You’re grumpy when you’re tired.”

Her response was to maturely parrot his words back at him as she plopped onto the bed and shuffled her way back under the blankets. Gage rolled his eyes and followed suit, immediately moving close and allowing his hand to resume its sentry on her stomach. To say that Gage had a bit of a fixation was an understatement, and each month that passed only amplified it. For a man who had never thought about having a family, he had very quickly taken to the idea.

But even as they pressed close, as Gage ran soothing circles across her belly to try and coax her to sleep, the anxiety surged as it was wont to do. So despite the discomfort Nora turned onto her side to face him, and he opened his eye questioningly.

“Porter, I have a question,” she said.

The use of his first name had his brow raising, a more serious expression settling across his face. “What’s up?”

“You’re happy, right?” He blinked, and she continued as he opened his mouth to speak, suddenly afraid of what he might say, or that he would think her question stupid. “I know that this wasn’t what you wanted. And I worry, because you never wanted to live in a settlement, and I made you come here and do all those things you hated, and I just…I love you. And I would do anything for you. And sometimes I worry that all of this, all that we have, is what I want and not really what you want.”

Gage was silent for a moment, no doubt waiting to see if there was anything else she wanted to get off her chest, but when she only looked beseechingly at him he gave a little sigh and spoke. “Darlin’, do you remember why I hated livin’ in a settlement?”

“Because you always got fucked over?”

He snorted, but nodded. “Yeah. Because no matter how good we did for ourselves, no matter how hard we worked, without fail someone else would come and just take it. And we never did anything to fight back. Now. Lets take a look at where we are now. Do you think any of these settlers would just go belly-up to the first raider that decided to try and demand tribute?”

Slowly, Nora began to shake her head. She couldn’t imagine MacCready just rolling over for a raider, and the settlers themselves were all tougher than they had been when Nora had first found them. Their defenses were solid, some of the best in the Wealth that didn’t come tied to a big city, and a raider would have to be dumb to think that they could just stroll up and claim what they wanted.

“Exactly. Ain’t nobody here gonna just give a random asshole all their shit because they waved a gun in their face. These people here, much as I don’t personally give a shit about them, are tough. Tougher than your average settler. So to answer your question: I’m happy. Am I always gonna wanna sit around and play settler? No. But you and I both know that if I ever got an itch to go out and cause a little mayhem that I can just go walk around and find any trouble I want and just come back home after. But I ain’t about to do somethin’ stupid like that when my mate is back here, bout to pop any day now. So long as you don’t start askin’ me to farm shit, I ain’t gonna be unhappy. I got you, I got a kid, and at the end of the day despite whatever crazy doubt you’ve managed to grow in that head of yours, I ain’t trapped here. Shit, Nora, you know I’m not one to just do what I’m told if I don’t wanna.” He shifted, gently brought his hand to her face to brush her hair back from her face. “I wanna be here, with you, with our family. Will I always be here? Probably not. But I’ll always come back to you. Ain’t much more I can offer you than that.”

Nora shifted, pressed her lips against his and and then caught it in her own to twine their fingers together, palm to palm. “Promise me you’ll tell me if you’re unhappy,” she said. “For peace of mind.”

“I promise,” he assured her. “Now. You gotta promise me that you’re gonna try and get some sleep. Else I’m gonna have to deal with your attitude all day tomorrow cause you were dumb and decided sleep was somethin’ other people did.”

A slow, playful grin stole across her lips as she caught her lower lip between her teeth. “What if I’m not tired?” she wheedled - and it wasn’t exactly true, but she couldn’t just give into him the first moment he asked.

“Guess we’ll just have to find a way to tucker you out, then,” Gage responded. And even though he was tired, and probably just ready to go back to sleep, he nudged her side and murmured for her to roll over with a sleepy promise in his voice that immediately had her going warm. She rolled, and Gage was immediately there, nestled up to her back as his hand swept up over her belly and his lips kissed a line down her throat. “This alright?”

Nora hummed, let her head fall back, and Gage gave her shoulder a playful little bite before his hand swept up over her stomach to carefully palm her breasts. Nora’s breasts had always been relatively sensitive, but now they were ridiculously reactive to even the barest of touches, and it had taken some adjustment for them to find the balance between just enough and too much pleasure. But Gage was detail oriented, and he had adjusted like a fish to water.

Slowly, tension began to unwind from her muscles in places she hadn’t even realized were tense to begin with. Gage kissed the back of her neck as his thumb slowly circled her nipple, mindful not to pinch (because the first time he had tried when her breasts began to swell, he’d wound up getting elbowed in the gut and put out of commission while he tried to catch his breath, and despite her immediate guilt, Nora was equally guilty of laughing so hard she nearly peed herself).

Any concern that his desire for her would wane when the changing sensitivity of her body meant he had to be gentle with her had been quelled fairly quickly after that. Now when he touched her, it was soft and attentive, and even if their relationship hadn’t started with love, she felt it now, and every time he touched her. Gage wasn’t one to use words to express how he felt - so he showed her in other ways.

Carefully, his thumb pressed down against her nipple and rubbed tight little circles over the bud, making her thighs press together and her hips wiggle as a little moan broke through her lips. His palm curled around her breasts to slowly knead the swollen flesh, large enough now that he couldn’t simply curl his hand around her and completely obscure her breast from view like he was once capable of. She whimpered, pressed up into his touch, and he just hummed and continued to massage her tender breast.

Eventually the pleasure began to veer towards too much, and she lifted a hand to gently tug at his wrist, and he pulled his palm away and let her breathe for a moment as his lips worried little marks across her throat.

When the sudden too-sharp pleasure faded away back to something warm and gentle, she used her grip on his wrist to gently guide him downwards. His hand slid down over the swell of her belly to press under the elastic hem of her pants and slip between her thighs. Her voice caught in her throat at the barest swipe of his calloused fingertips over her core, and she shifted carefully to hook her thigh over his. The move spread her open, gave his fingers more room to maneuver, and Gage was not bashful about taking advantage of it. He cupped her cunt in his hand, let his palm press down against her curious clit as his fingers spread her apart and leisurely began to trace each line and fold of her.

This position, this careful press of his hand, gave her some control over how much pleasure he managed to pull from her. Her breasts weren’t the only part of her swollen and tender - her cunt had reacted similarly, become unreasonably sensitive to every touch, and it was another thing that they’d had to adjust to. Her hips rocked slowly against his hand, his rough palm dragging across her clit and pulling soft gasps from her while his fingers continued their slow exploration of her until she was leaking arousal, slicking up her thighs and his fingers.

“Porter, I want you,” she murmured, using her heel to try and tug his hips closer against his with mixed results.

“Sure it wont be too much?” he murmured. “Don’t wanna hurt you, darlin’.”

“Just be gentle,” she coached, and Gage didn’t ask her again. His hand withdrew to tug down the waist of her pants, sitting up slightly to get them beyond her knees, and the rest was taken care of by a few kicks of her own to free one leg to return to its sentry hooked over his thigh. As she kicked off her pants he pushed his pants down and out of the way, and when they settled back against each other she could feel him resting against her, warm and heavy, and it made her whole body warm.

His hips rocked slowly against hers, each glide of his cock across her core making her whimper, before reaching between them to finally guide himself into her. Her hand lashed out and caught his hip hard as she keened, back arching as he slowly stretched her open, and no matter how many times he pushed inside of her it was just as overwhelming as the first time.

“Slow,” she panted, her cunt tensing uneasily around him as her nerves quickly overwhelmed themselves. Gage dutifully paused, warm breath panting against her throat as he waited for her, and the moment her body began to warm and relax around him she loosened her grip and nodded. “Okay.”

With her permission he began thrusting into her, careful to keep himself from pushing too deep too fast, and her whole body turned to butter as she sank back into his arms and closed her eyes. As much as part of her missed the hard touches, how he felt when he was fully hilted inside of her, there was still something beautiful about the care he took with her when her body just wasn’t capable of taking all of him.

She hadn’t been so sensitive when she was pregnant with Shaun, but this child was continuing to prove to be an entirely different experience for her, and every adjustment Gage made to account for her own vulnerabilities just endeared him more to her.

It didn’t take long for her body to start to unravel, each slow drag of his cock more stimulating than the last, and Gage kept his pace steady and constant as she began to whine and tense around him. His hand gripped her hip, held her steady so she couldn’t start fucking back onto him and overwork herself, and she groaned as he kissed across her shoulder blades and nipped at her earlobe.

A wave of bliss rushed over her, slow and heavy, and she mewled sweetly as her cunt spasmed and hugged his cock to foolishly try and coax him deeper. Gage resisted, kept himself tucked warm inside of her, stilling himself until the flutters began to abate and her body began to sink slowly back into boneless bliss. He pulled from her, still hard, and Nora turned to face him as her arm slid down to take him in hand. He was slick with her arousal and her hand glided seamlessly along him, slow and adoring with a little twist whenever her palm swept across his swollen tip.

“Do you want my mouth?” she asked softly, kissing under his jaw as his head tipped back and he grunted. He nodded, and she pulled her hand back to nudge at him. “C’mon then, move.”

They adjusted their positions, and Gage stood at the bedside while she scooted herself over to the edge of the bed. For not the first time she was appreciative he was so tall, and of the fact that their bed sat low to the floor. It left her at just the right height for moments like this when she couldn’t maneuver quite as eagerly as she once could.

Gage’s hands swept into her hair and pulled it back from her face as she kissed along his hipbone, hand winding back around his length to pump him more confidently, fast and firm like he liked it. Her lips parted and his groan reverberated through her as she fed his cock into her mouth and immediately curled her tongue up against him to stroke along the thick vein that trailed up the underside.

He might not be able to fuck her cunt like he liked to, but her mouth was still fair game.

Slowly she began working him into her mouth, opening wide so that he her slide back over her tongue to nudge at the entrance to her throat before slipping back to lick and suck at his leaking tip with gentle enthusiasm. Her hands lifted, caught his hips and braced herself there as she sank back down and repeated the action, pulling back to lath her tongue along his cock from base to tip.

“Fuck, always forget how fuckin’ good you look like this,” he murmured, and she smiled as she kissed along his length, looking up at him through her lashes to admire the way pleasure made his lips twist, the corners of his eyes crinkle and revealing those little crows feet that she loved. “Shit, Nora.”

“I like it when you say my name,” she breathed, pulling back to take him in her mouth again and this time when his cock tickled at the back of her throat she just sank deeper, relaxing so that her throat welcomed him in like an old friend, and he cursed a storm under his breath as his grip in her hair tightened and then pulled her down along his length until her nose brushed against his pubic bone. Her grip tightened, nails digging hard into his skin and leaving ten new indentations to join the number of faded and long-vanished marks that she had left in his skin over time. She swallowed around him to heat the way he groaned, to watch the way his head fell back, and then relaxed again as his hips began to rock forward slowly at first, and then faster when all she did was moan her encouragement.

His cock tested the limits of her throat and her lungs, and as his hips snapped forward her eyes began to water as she struggled to draw in breath, and he gave another thrust before holding her against him. Her throat spasmed and tensed around him, making him growl and give a useless thrust deeper, and tears started to bubble up on her lashes before he withdrew with a curse and let her draw in a tremulous breath, gasping for air as spit dripped from her lips and built a bridge between his swollen cock and her flushed lips.

“Shit,” he breathed, and his thumb swept up to clear some of the saliva from her chin and run along the full length of her lower lip. “Fuck. Look at you. Still the prettiest god damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

She preened, blush stealing across her cheeks, and rewarded his thoughtless praise by pulled him close and taking him into her mouth again with renewed fervor. She fucked her mouth onto him, sucking and gurgling when it sank too deep, and Gage was quickly losing the ability to speak any coherent string of words and was instead reduced to half-muttered phrases between groans and gasps.

Her hand came up under him to carefully cup his balls, rolling them against her fingers and feeling the way they began to tense and pull up as his orgasm began to encroach. She hummed encouragingly, sank deeper onto him until he could feel her throat choking itself on him, and all he could give her was a sputtered warning before his cock jerked and ropes of cum shot into her throat. She pulled back slightly as the first spirt nearly made her gag, letting his cum coat her tongue and settle there until his breathing began to calm and his cock started to soften. She swallowed him down as she pulled back, giving his cock a warm kiss before settling back and lifting her hand to wipe her mouth clean.

Porter didn’t wait long to bend, catching her cheeks in his hands and dragging his mouth against hers. She swooned, petted her fingertips through his hair, and was smiling soft and silly when his mouth finally left hers.

“I fuckin’ love you. You know that right?” he murmured. Her heart twisted in on itself and she nodded, impossibly happy as he gently coaxed her further back into the bed so he could reclaim his spot beside her.

This time when she tried to sleep, it came soft and gentle, and all of her anxieties were left behind to allow her a blessedly dreamless night.

-

About a week later, when Gage was walking the perimeter with MacCready and an overly-curious Duncan nipping at their heels, Nora was plucking corn from the stalk when the first stirrings of discomfort began to swell in her stomach. She paused, took a deep breath, and waited until the tension faded away. She continued working, but her mind was more closely focused on her belly, and soon enough as she moved onto the next row another tense cramp-like sensation claimed her and forced her to pause and take a deep breath through her nostrils. It wasn’t the first time her body had started to tense and cramp that day, but it was the first time that they were less than thirty minutes apart. Which meant that the contractions that she’d assumed was just her body practicing were not just that at all, and that they were coming faster, and that she was…probably about to give birth.

“Hey, Annie?” she said when it happened again only ten minutes later, setting her basket at her feet with a grunt and placing a hand at the small of her back to uselessly try and mitigate the discomfort. “Can you get Curie for me? Maybe?”

The settler - a young woman, perhaps seventeen at the oldest - went wide eyed. “Is everythin’ alright?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah, everything is fine,” Nora assured with a small wave of her hand. “I’m having some contractions, and they’re kinda feeling like the real thing, and I’d rather have Curie here just to be safe. I’m gonna go sit down.”

She waddled off slowly to the benches along the front of the Red Rocket and took an unsteady seat, legs sprawled out unladylike in front of her as her hands rested against her belly and she focused on steadying her breathing. Curie was hurrying up to her in no time, immediately asking her a hundred questions that Nora somehow summoned the patience to answer.

Within the next hour she was in her bed, Curie puttering around the room beside her, convinced that Nora was going into labor. Nora, foolishly, believed that it would be a simple affair. She had been told that the second pregnancy always went better than the first, but that assumption was quickly tossed into the garbage when the first powerful contraction hit her and she nearly broke Curie’s hand.

“Madame! Are you alright?” Curie asked, sweeping a gentle hand over her brow as her eyes quickly swept across her.

“Get Porter here right fucking now,” she hissed between her teeth.

It was around that time that she realized of course this wouldn’t be as easy as Shaun was. When she’d had Shaun she’d had an epidural and anything they could give her to mitigate the pain, so when he’d slipped out, it’d been almost ridiculously quick and easy. Now, she had none of that.

Annie, who had taken it upon herself to help Curie and Nora, scuttled out of the home and to the walkways overhead. Within a few minutes she could hear the quick and heavy footsteps of Gage, followed shortly thereafter by another set of feet, and then the bedroom door was open and Gage was at her bedside. McCready paused in the doorway after Annie hurried back in, Duncan at his leg and clutching him as he peered curiously into the room.

“This is it?” Gage asked as he hooked his foot around the one chair in the room and tugged it up to the bedside to sit.

“No, I thought it’d just be fun to lay in bed and scream for a little while,” she hissed between clenched teeth as another contraction hit her and sustained itself, trying for all the world to just destroy her womb for how much it ached. “Motherfucking - yes. Pretty sure this is it.”

MacCready snorted in the doorway, and she heard Duncan dutifully say: “One.”

“Shit,” Gage said succinctly. “Alright. Well, I’m here now. So. Why don’t you focus on breakin’ my hand instead of the good doctors, alright?”

“Two,” Duncan chimed.

“I’m gonna break more than just your hand you asshole,” she groaned, but still her hand flung out towards him and Porter didn’t hesitate to curl his hand around hers.

“Three.”

“Duncan, now might not be the best time to start keeping count,” MacCready mumbled in the background.

“Miss Nora said she’d give me a cap every time I heard her or Mr. Gage swear,” Duncan protested, and Gage’s nose wrinkled up at being called Mr-Anything, and despite everything Nora laughed and pressed her palm to her face.

“Duncan, sweetheart, you’re gong to bleed me dry if you stay in here,” she said. “Porter will keep count for you.”

“I’ll what now?” Gage asked, to shocked to impact any sort of emotion in his response.

“Porter will keep track of how many times we swear so you can go have fun. Somewhere else.”

MacCready helped make the decision for him with a careful nudge away from the room, and when Duncan set off he closed the door and stepped across to lean against the wall. When Nora fixed him with a quizzical look, he was quick to remind her that he was one of the few people here that had gone through this before aside from her and one or two of the other settlers. Nora wasn’t about to send him out after that - the idea of a stranger helping didn’t sit well with her, considering she didn’t have any guarantee that they actually knew what they were doing.

“You ain’t really expecting me to keep track of how many times we say fuck, are you?” Gage asked.

Nora shook her head quickly. “Of course not. I was just gonna throw in twenty caps and call it a day.”

Gage snorted, but any retort that he was going to give her was interrupted by Curie asking, “Madam, first I do what you to know that while I have much knowledge on how to help you give birth, I have never actually done this before.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Curie, don’t worry too much,” MacCready said, reaching into his pocket to palm his pack of cigarettes and then thinking better of it. “I helped Lucy do this a few times.”

“I will feel much more confident with your help, Monsieur MacCready,” Curie said with an audible edge of relief in her voice. Gage fixed Nora with a stern look that she translated to mean: ‘Really? These are the people you want with you?’ She gave him a responding ‘Shut the fuck up they’re my friends’ glare that had him raising his free hand placatingly and settling back into his seat. The exchange went without Curie so much as noticing a thing. “Now, madam, I’m going to have to check on your progress. Excuse me.”

The sheets were flipped up, and Nora flopped back onto the bed with a displeased little grunt. God, she hoped this kid was going to be polite about this.

As it turned out, her baby wasn’t going to be overly polite about anything. Ever. Because even though things had started out quickly, as soon as the contractions began to shift into real, sincere pain and not just an uncomfortable cramping sensation, her asshole of a kid decided to take its sweet time, and at one point Curie mentioned the idea that the child could still be breached inside of her and Nora started sobbing in earnest to the immediate discomfort of both men in the room.

Hours passed. The child was not, in fact, breached. Porter’s hands had no shortage of bruising, and a few crescent shaped scrapes and scabs by the end of things (“Oh, hey, at least you’re used to that,” a pain-drunk Nora had joked between pushes when Gage forced her to switch to a different, less abused hand. MacCready had snorted in the background, warm and wet towel in hand, and Curie had rolled her eyes while Gage sighed as if she’d told the worst joke in the world).

But she gave birth, eventually, just when she was bordering on complete and total exhaustion, and when the pain faded away to a discomforting tension lingering in her muscles, and Curie set to work on injecting her with a little med-x to numb the discomfort as she started cleaning her up. It was MacCready who nudged her to sit up slightly, waiting when she took a moment to tug her shirt off and toss it aside, before carefully setting her naked and quite angry daughter down on her chest.

The moment she felt her soft, wrinkly skin nestled up against hers, a slow calm settled over her and had her eyes closing as she exhaled slowly. Her hand raised, pressed gently to the small infant’s back, and for the first time in a long while she felt that maybe - just maybe - she’d finally be able to have all the things she’d dreamt of.

“Course we’d go and have a daughter,” Gage murmured. “Like I ain’t already wrapped around your finger. Shit.”

Nora smiled at him and reached out to gently run her thumb over the arc of his cheek, and she watched as some of the subtle signs of anxiety fled and he began to relax alongside her. “Hey. We did it.”

“Really think this is more of a ‘you did it’ Nora,” he said. “I just let you use me as a stress ball. Don’t know that I get any credit for that.”

“So, now that the fun is over, I’m gonna leave you to it,” MacCready said - and Nora had forgotten he was still there - as he passed by Curie with a small pat on her shoulder and strolled out. “Don’t forget. You owe Duncan 76 caps.”

“Fuck, he counted,” Gage mumbled.

“77.”

“Goddammit.”

“78 - hey, you’re really bad at this.”

Porter threw a pillow at MacCready, who ducked out of the door just in time to avoid it.

“So! Have you thought of names?” Curie asked, pulling back the sheets into place and offering Nora some modesty as she stepped up to the other side of Nora and took a moment to really look at her and the baby, divorced from the medical haze that had claimed her when they were in the thick of things. “Oh, she has your nose, Madame.”

“Thank god for that,” Gage murmured under his breath. Nora just smiled, gently combed her fingers through the tufts of chocolate brown hair smattered across her scalp in little messy curls. The color was too light to be hers.

Nora glanced out the window, where early glimpses of light was barely beginning to peek out from the grey clouds of morning. “Dawn?” she asked, looking to Gage. He shrugged, which was about as close to approval as she would get from him. For all that he had been there for her in every step of the process, when it came to names he had been particularly uninspired and more apt to let her know the names he hated than the ones he liked.

“A beautiful name,” Curie said. “Now. I will leave you two alone. If you need me, I will be here as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you Cure,” Nora thanked with a small, sincere smile. Curie just smiled and pressed a warm hand to her shoulder before making her exit, giving Gage’s shoulder a small pat on the way.

And then, finally, they were alone. Nora fell back against the pillow, sinking down on the bed, and then scooted over so that Gage could get up from his chair and sit beside her while she immediately wiggled over and into his side.

“We’re never gonna get a full nights sleep again,” she sighed, adjusting Dawn against her chest to work on getting her to latch onto her breast. “And once we get past the year mark I’m officially in unfamiliar territory. So. You know. Expect some panicking.”

“It’ll be fine,” Gage said, sliding his hand into her hair to carefully massage the back of her head. She groaned and went limp against him, cheek pressed to his stomach when Dawn latched on and started the uncomfortable process of figuring out how to feed.

Dawn seemed quick to figure things out - quicker than Shaun had been, because with Shaun it was a near days worth of anxiety that her milk just wasn’t good enough for him. Dawn seemed to hold no such protests.

“Thank you,” Nora said softly, casting her gaze up to watch Gage watch her. Her free hand reached for him and he took it without pulling his eye from their child. “You told me that you’d take care of me, and look where we are now. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

“Well, that is kind of how this shit works, isn’t it?” he said blithely. She rolled her eyes and dug her elbow between his ribs, making him jolt and curse her with a grin.

“Seriously, Porter. I…” she trailed off and let her eyes fall back to her baby. Her baby.

Part of her had been afraid the moment she gave birth she would be wracked with a world of anxieties - fear that she wouldn’t be good enough, that she would lose another child, that it would just be the final nail in the coffin that held her Pre-War dreams. But here, and now, with her child in her arms and her mate beside her? Nora could believe that things would be alright.

“C’mon, ain’t no use dwellin’ on anything,” Gage said before she could lose herself in her thoughts. “Could be thankin’ you just as much, but if we started that pissin’ contest then we’d never get anything else done ever again. You’re grateful for me. I’m grateful for you. ’s all that needs to be said.”

Nora smiled, and with a small little sigh, released her ironclad grip on all of her worries.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I think we’ll be just fine.”


End file.
